UTM parameters
Tags appended to a destination URL so the advertiser's own analytics can attribute the visit.
Five conventional tags — source, medium, campaign, content, term. They are read by the advertiser's analytics, not by the publisher, and they are invisible to everything except the advertiser's own reporting.
They are also worth handling carefully on the receiving end: a site that treats unknown query parameters as filters will show an empty page to every visitor arriving from a tagged link, which is a silent way to lose an entire campaign.
How LinkBourse handles it
Tracking links carry a per-order identifier server-side, so attribution does not depend on the buyer tagging correctly — and our own catalogue ignores unknown query parameters rather than filtering on them.
Terms it depends on
- Postback
- A signed server call from the advertiser back to the tracker saying a conversion happened.
- Attribution window
- How long after a click or view a conversion still counts as caused by that ad.
- Click-through rate
- Clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage.